memories in the space where the human was

maybe it's the weather
summer with a hint of rain
happy solstice once again
or that i wrote you
wanting to hear your voice
like the times we were a dysfunctional tribe
and everything felt more alive
to me.

digging up the reincarnations, i give you a red one.
they're the most popular.
all these naughty tendencies coming back
like a fame whore attendee with a penchant
for bad hats, foreshadowing the  trenchant
  commoner princess playing baccarat

returning to the scene of where you were, i place
a bookmark on the sand, fold it over, stand.
it's true i once thought we were fated, raced
to find an outlet for your needs so my hand

wouldn't be the one carressing  your laundry.
but i needn't have worried. i was, by far, too fat
and you're kinda like me, with a squeamish quandary
(  i make the slant rhyme, my only one,  in fact)

"why is my attraction so physical, why the ideal?"
when   ideal carries a concealed knife, ignorant
of its location , buried deeply in a congealed
desire that i seem to  unearth, not so much intent

 as muddled in lipids i can reveal
with my therapist-love trap, my pink room
that heals if you want to be healed or kills
all hope resting here, find your own moon.

anne visits me in the structure. she is keeper
of skeletons awaiting suicide,. the vulture
in the supper. .her head nods at the reaper
in  a suit of gasoline, she smiles at his culture

the way that he preens. at last i have you
his purr the motor of a sweet chevy
his scent an arabesque of heat, shadow and blue
his kiss the last you know , so heavy.

but i digress into the poem and its rhyme
forgive me, i know you haven't much time
like me and some others you feel the coil
unwinding, we haven't gathered for oil

but art. not money, but art! that means beauty
in all its carnality,  i want to live the poem
i told you once, then left to find it. my duty
as you saw it, smashed, a mirror for a home.

and so in shards i see your eyes,
reflected out from where we were
the never changing battle cries
of love me now, forever, cure me

  hold me, take this razor sharp tounge
into your breast, into your home .
these songs  are for the quick  of you,
 the slick sweet slice thick of you


i want to go abab, but always aabb
the rhythm changes with my moods
i want to cling to pattern or lose me
let  the poem be master, live as fools.


it was thus with us. returning
reincarnating   others thoughts
  doomed to sketches burning
brightly  , fire consumed,  unbought

 unsold i wager. exchange like melty
diaphanous canvas on tumblr
scrolling off the page, lost in a smelty
pistache of art like beauty rumbles

the eye, like knowledge stiffens penis,
envy and courage: sometimes at once
sometimes with a delayed  venus
on the half shell patina. we were dunces

and not only because it rhymes.
we didn't see the clock hands move
or know  the parable of time.
or is that just excuse?  sans groove

we dilequesce and look for reason
aren't lovers still the silliest season?

dear mascara makers

please make a product that will thicken my lashes
without making me look like a kardashian.

omg, i just wrote myself into a very popular google search.
oh well.
still, those star pointed lashes
look they have a frightened fuzzy caterpillar stuck between
the eyeball and the lid.

don't they? i imagine thick and lustrous,
not long and spikey.

please, work on that, k?

scatterproof twisted spin

the twist integrates my atoms
so that fucked upness keeps me
together. if only i could get to
the same mindset about all these
boiling suns trying to tear me apart.

like your almost ex for instance
the way the kindle cries for fire
or a face full of halogen.
if you can find the switch
i'd say turn it on.

the beach awaits
beside iris seas
floating serenely
on the world's skin






*(*()
\\





 desiring kama sutra oil
  we walk a pimp gauntlet
getting eyed and good eveninged
by barry white voices, saturday
heels striding the concrete carpet
of the xxx adult superstore. show no fear
good evening them back, sway as
 i open the door all  liberated
tho you will be paying
for the clearance
 item we are directed to
 by a sweet boy
who doubtless drives
  the big blue F250
parked at the entrance

 . the oils didn't
do so well,  we stuck them
over there.

we search for the smell of eucaplytus
in a narrow ailse stuck away from
the rows of dildos and vaginas with famous
porn star photos promising
 "authentic"  a pert blond squeezes
by wth a scuse me .    scuse me.  she says again
going to and   from the office
in the back.
the oils  are all too expensive
but the clerk offers us ten percent off.
we want the oils.
 that's why we're in drew park tonite
three  porn videos dominate the shelf
behind the register and the blonde comes up
to the counter with strawberry shortcake
is it a party?you eye the cakes.  she giggles.
three bi racial couples copulate on  tvs.
a thin woman in black stilettos minces
down the video ailes looking for a pole to hold.
peeps shows in the back. the gauntlet
out the glass has dispersed somewhat,
the bouncers are  eating shortcake while a couple of  pimps
slide into a malibu  and tricked out old skool chevy with
skinny tires and small bullet proof windows.
i wonder who she's waiting on
you say of the woman in the white dress
and  white stripper shoes we saw when we came
in and  who's still in the parking
lot,  but now she's eating
 strawberry shortcake. she's waiting
i say for a sale.
you laugh as we exit
the lot in our big cadillac
i wonder how much she costs?
oh prolly more than you got left
but  hey there's   a  discount
 if you come early.

what's a writer anyway?

i call myself a poet, a writer.
can i do that in today's megamedia
culture withoutactively participating in said culture
of reading, writing, tweeting, booking, blogrolling?
  why do i still ask myself
this question? of course i can
because i do.


but does audience really make the writer?


emily wrote for herself. as did...
oh shit jack
i forget the name of the author who buried his texts
in chests after an initial success, publishing only a small
percentage of his work, much of that under a nom  de plume-
and anyway, was that not the point?
success has a way of poisoning the art.


or the art can fade without ping. what i've felt
since the demise of my favorite coffee bbs.
so maybe i never was a writer,
but  a chameleon of words.

i always wanted someone else to do the editing
but that's where the craft enters. trimming  strokes
that got out of bounds, cutting off  limbs of baby alliterations
because they don't push the arc of the story
well enough . anyone can vomit out
an abstract painting but a painter manipulates her input
to get the right color red in her regurgitants.
so a writer has to pick and chose the words to be layed on ...
well paper is so 20th century aint it?
let's just say the right aphorisms to tweet.


i really don't want to  go to tweetville tho.
it's an instantaniety that strikes me as a bit too kardashian
facebook's platform and the fact that mr zuckerberg
cares not a whit for the content except to have his lordly rights
in order to market to you, consumer, what he's told you to crave,
keeps me from making that place a home. it's cluttered and difficult
to navigate as well. that's a personal problem if i wanna
have a wide audience. so i say  nahhhh.

he keeps telling me i oughta be in academia.
i tell him things have changed in ten years.
it's getting more liberal outside the tower
but squeezing tighter inside . the kids that
attend the universities today come from privilege
and they don't like it when their trust fund
sensitivities are challenged by commie pinko ideas.
shut up prof, what are you smokin?
sure there's posers that get all ghetto on yo ass but any
real ganstas or reforming ogs be comin
to the university to get whitified, suburbized.
 so they don't need no social welfare nanny state programming
thankuverymuch. ahem.


still. i write. so i guess like poet, it's one of those categories
that can be open as i like. i guess i'll keep the handle
maybe modify it with free.
i'm a freewriter.

yeh.

flat

you pull out of the lot

there's a dead squirrel 

bleeding at the entrance

and you hear the  thunk

of your right rear tire. just when you've

got a handle on the nuts

 an engineer comes

by with a can of pressure-

sharing open secrets ,

selling your skepticism 

for free this time. 

at dinner you spill

the wine

drop the noodles

fall asleep on the couch

neglect the clean up.

but the brocade jacket

makes up for all this

at least in your mind. 

sleep is a land 

you travel with open 

eyes. eyes meant for

closure, eyes of basalt

and miniature epiphanies

buried in the iris. 

close them now

get to the bottom 

of awakening.

postgrad symphony

he'll do it in his own time
someone whispers down the line
waking up in the middle
of life includes the riddle

where time's journey to the river
crosses paths with coming hither
glances from lotharian
romancers in contarian

human form. an aquarian
sense filled with  librarian's
musty nooks  he rides net fissures
occam's either/or side ,slithers

eco gnomic noncommitals
keeping dreams in a skittle
basket hung on a rope of brine
discarding them one at a time.

graduation eve

battered and batterer
beat  into my cave
at least it's air conditioned.

you're out of skool now
 she stopped
buying food five hours ago
and now at last you're hungry
unto starving. you know that game
and the silent scorn. she does too.

it doesn't matter. all the things i wanted
to be for you all the things i pretended i was
revolted, rattlesnakes in a canvas bag
tied with god's pleasure. it's not even gold.

the floor's   stained with lies
feet bloodied on broken dreams
stumble into ground intentions , a bit slimy
as if the accident was a dog's
that the baby put in her mouth, as babies will.

no fine promises, no promises. fine.
i can't talk because the inevitable
arrived last nite and deafened us all.
seven more weeks of this
might cure us, but most likely will just
drive the poison deeper. i hope the graduate
takes the keys to the iffy car and just drives.